Twenty-First-Century Alchemists

In the lab with a team of science historians who are attempting to re-create recipes from a sixteenth-century text.

The drawers at the Making and Knowing Lab, at Columbia University, have labels rarely seen outside a Harry Potter novel: “Ox Gall,” “Spiderwebs,” “Powder for Hourglasses,” “Dragon’s Blood.” The denizens of the lab re-create old recipes from alchemy-era texts—primarily of the sixteenth century—and this brings them into contact with some unusual ingredients. On a recent Monday morning, Joel Klein, a redheaded history-of-science postdoc who studies Isaac Newton’s alchemical work, sniffed a bag of flakes labelled “Rabbit-Skin Glue.” “It smells like skin,” he said. Another sniff. “Although I’m not sure what a sommelier would say.”

The Making and Knowing Lab is run by Columbia’s Center for Science and Society. Its recipe re-creations take place in an old chemistry lab and are supported by $436,000 from the National Science Foundation. The goal is to help science historians understand the materials that craftsmen used centuries ago, as well as the technologies and techniques that were available at the dawn of the scientific revolution. Elsewhere in the lab, a dozen students in white coats bustled about. Siddhartha Shah, an art-history graduate student, was making counterfeit emeralds. The recipe involved mixing red lead, copper, and other ingredients in a ceramic crucible, then melting everything with a blowtorch in a small furnace, which he’d constructed from bricks and wire.

Although his first attempts had flopped—the “emerald” looked like a nub of coal—Shah wasn’t discouraged. “It was fascinating to watch the color change from red to green to black,” he said. “Then our crucible exploded.”

The sixth and seventh attempts produced two translucent green buttons. Shah removed his own emerald ring—he also wore emerald earrings—and held it next to the buttons for comparison.

Smith founded the Making and Knowing Lab two years ago, in a moment of self-reckoning. She’d been working on a book about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century craftsmen. “They made all these claims, but I realized I didn’t exactly know what they were doing,” she said. Many recipes omitted crucial details or used obscure ingredients—swine paunch, jujube syrup, prunes of St. Antonin. Smith decided that the only way to really understand the recipes was to try them out herself, assisted by a platoon of graduate students.

The lab takes most of its recipes from a sixteenth-century French text that was later titled “Choses Diverses.” It’s a bit of a hodgepodge, covering everything from casting a lizard in metal (make sure it’s dead before you start, or the mold will break) to training dogs (hold cheese in your armpit).

Danielle Carr, an anthropology graduate student, was making paintbrushes from a squirrel tail. She’d bagged her quarry on Amazon, for three dollars. “It’s on top of my fridge at the moment,” she said. “I take it down to horrify people.” Making the brush would require heating a quill in boiling water, then threading the squirrel fibres into its tip.

Smith leaned in to study the goose feathers. “I brought these back from Cambridge,” she said.

Donna Bilak, a postdoc in history, laughed. “Pamela, I don’t know how you ever clear customs.”

“No, no! Cambridge, Massachusetts,” Smith said. She’d found them while jogging along the Charles River.

Over at the gold station, two students were puzzling over how to extract yellow pigment from turmeric. They needed to dissolve the turmeric, but they weren’t sure what fluid to use.

“Oh! We have brandy,” Naomi Rosenkranz, the lab’s project manager, said. She lifted a fume hood, revealing several bottles of booze labelled “Not for Consumption.” (The lab also has a stash of Charles Shaw; many recipes call for wine.) The students decided on Everclear. They made a sort of craft cocktail, dumping three generous shots into a glass jar, along with several tablespoons of turmeric.

Once heated, the mixture started bubbling, and out came the iPhones for pictures—a step that’s unique to twenty-first-century alchemists. Twenty minutes later, a rust-colored sludge had collected at the bottom of the jar, which the students strained with a (non-medieval) coffee filter. Class ended before the gold-making could begin in earnest.

Smith wants to try her hand at making animal chimeras, especially the “kitten with wings and horn” recipe from the French text; she’s been in touch with a taxidermist. She also wants to tackle medicines. The author of “Choses Diverses” remains unknown, but Smith said, “He seems very interested in cures for gonorrhea.”

In the meantime, she’s busy with other projects—grinding up beetles, buttering pansy petals, and making gilded cookies. Asked about the garbage bag on the windowsill labelled “Manure,” she laughed. “Yeah, we have manure stashed all over the place here,” she said. “I have some on the balcony of my apartment, too.” ♦

This article appears in the print edition of the September 26, 2016, issue, with the headline “Makers.”